Bringing It All Back Home

In his NYT op-ed today, John Kerry proposes getting out of Iraq by the end of the year. In contrast to some of the senator's earlier efforts circa 2004, not to mention the Bush administration's continued vagueness, the plan has the virtues of clarity and simplicity. Kerry offers two simple deadlines: one for the Iraqis to form a government, and another to complete our withdrawal.

The plan's underlying assumptions are that avoiding civil war is the Iraqis' problem (fairly obvious) and that we can live with the consequences if they fail (somewhat less obvious).

Ironically, Kerry is not president today largely due to George W. Bush's biggest mistake. As disasterous a choice as invading Iraq was, it was successful in flummoxing the Democrats in general (and Kerry in particular) for the past three years. Kerry's problem in 2004 was two-fold: he was unable to unite the Democrats (or his own mind) about whether the war was wrong in the first place, and unable to offer a future plan for "victory" that differed dramatically from Bush's. He was reduced to saying that he would have done "everything" differently, while somehow achieving the same aims. The result was a mess of arguments. Each true in itself (i.e., Saddam was dangerous enough to merit the threat of war, but not war itself; we sent too few troops to control Iraq, but we should not increase them), yet they formed an incoherent critique as a whole. Meanwhile, Bush's arguments were false in nearly every particular (i.e., Saddam had WMD, Iraq was the central front in the war on terror, we had international support, progress was being made), but they had the virtue of internal consistency.

So should Kerry have offered this plan in 2004? Would a deadline for withdrawal have allowed him to draw a sharper contrast with Bush, and thereby win the election? I doubt it. In November 2004, the public learning curve on Iraq was still pretty steep. It was just beginning to sink in that the war had been launched for fraudulent reasons and should never have happened. But the sentiment was still strong that once in, we had to see it through. Kerry (and Howard Dean, for that matter) had no choice but to accept American responsibility for ensuring Iraq's future stability, regardless of how difficult that task would prove to be.

War supporters will no doubt seize on Kerry's new plan as confirmation of their charge that if elected he would have "cut and run" from Iraq at the first opportunity. It's more likely that Kerry didn't announce this plan for the simple reason that it wasn't yet his plan. Had he taken office in January 2005, I bet he would have given war one last chance, even if it rested on the shaky notions that allies could be re-enlisted in the cause and that an effective Iraqi army could be quickly formed to assume the burden of the fight. The difference is that Kerry would have been in a position to change course if facts proved these assumptions wrong, while Bush has made a stubborn refusal to observe (let alone react to) reality into the cornerstone of his Iraq policy.

It's possible, then, that the election was fought on the right issue. America chose the stubborn guy, and we can look forward to many more years in Iraq as a result.

As John Kerry tries to position himself for another run in 2008, he can only hope that Bush's failures don't sink him yet again. Today's op-ed is refreshingly free of nuance. The question is whether it is a position Kerry can stick to, defend, and rally his party around. That leadership question is still unresolved.